Andy Rosenzweig: City needs new approach to policing

Tuesday

Oct 29, 2013 at 12:01 AM

Your Oct. 22 editorial (“A bullet’s high costs”) rightly praised the series by Bill Malinowski and Amanda Milkovitz “The Cost of a Bullet.” However, I’m afraid neither the series nor the editorial connected...

By Andy Rosenzweig

Your Oct. 22 editorial (“A bullet’s high costs”) rightly praised the series by Bill Malinowski and Amanda Milkovitz “The Cost of a Bullet.” However, I’m afraid neither the series nor the editorial connected the dots sufficiently. Ironically, one need read no further than that day’s paper to find examples of questionable decision making, misspent public funds, and intransigent political leadership.

A front-page article (“Push under way to reopen city pool”) described Mayor Angel Taveras stubbornly standing by his decision to close the Davey Lopes pool, citing low attendance. The mayor stated that it costs $45,000 to run the pool for seven weeks. It’s sadly ironic that this is fairly close to the annual cost of incarcerating one prisoner in minimum security at the Adult Correctional Institutions ($46,222, as reported in the ACI’s “Fiscal Year 2012 Annual Population Report”). How can the mayor, a child of the city, not get this?

In another page 1 article entitled “Adult club’s license suspended, not revoked, for violations,” Public Safety Commissioner Steve Paré said: “I am extremely disappointed” about the club’s hiring of a 14-year-pld “dancer.” He called it “outrageous,” and, of course, he’s correct. But also outrageous are the lame remarks and action taken by the city’s Board of Licenses. This board reeks of cronyism at best, and at worst, though no smoking gun is evident, a stench leaks under the door of the board’s chambers.

The third relevant piece on page 5 (“Health association considers gun violence”) quotes various stakeholders, but the most salient point came from Teny Gross, director of the Institute for the Study and Practice of Non-violence: “[T]he national figure of 300 million private firearms in private hands ... makes no sense for the richest country in the world.”

Indeed. But my friend doesn’t say nearly enough. This national model for curbing violence, by intervening early to stem retaliatory violence between gang members, has suffered from a general lack of support, leading to its staff of street workers being decimated (16 at its height to today’s 4).

What’s conspicuously absent in all of these pieces is any roadmap for change. Courageous action is needed, some sort of master plan that focuses on government (especially the police, prosecution, and courts) changing its priorities.

Change is long overdue. As a 40-year veteran of policing, I challenge Providence’s mayor, the City Council, judiciary, legislature, attorney general and governor to take the following steps:

•Expand, rather than reduce, drug treatment alternative programs focusing on treatment and education in lieu of enforcement and incarceration. Rhode Island needs less, not more, incarceration of low-level drug offenders. To do otherwise is a waste and counter-productive to community needs.

•Create cold case squads of police and prosecutors to bring murderers to justice. Sometimes fiction reminds us of our obvious failures. In the crime writer Michael Connelly’s book “The Closers,” a Los Angeles police commander says: “A city that forgets its murder victims is a city lost.”

•Provide more funding for the state’s crime lab. There is a paucity of staff and technology with respect to the state’s ability to process crime scene evidence (especially DNA). This makes no sense.

•Dismantle the Providence Board of Licenses. I appeared before the same body 10 years ago, for the same reason Commissioner Paré did recently. Some of these clubs are incubators of violence and the abuse of children. They should be closed, not merely shuttered for a few weeks. An entire new body should be appointed, including at least two members from public safety.

•Restore funding to the Institute for the Study and Practice of Non-violence. The city desperately needs street workers, who like the police, are a front line of defense in preventing even greater violence.

•Bring the police department back to full strength, but not until it creates a real community policing model. Unfortunately, the Providence Police Department, like many around the country, has practiced a faux type of community policing, where the chief and commanders make efforts to connect to neighborhood leaders, but the cops who respond to calls do policing in the same old way — failing to develop relationships of trust in the neighborhoods.

Einstein’s well-known definition of insanity is in play here (doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result). It’s high time for substantive change.

Andy Rosenzweig retired as a lieutenant from the New York Police Department, was the chief investigator for the New York County district attorney, and was a deputy chief in both the Providence and Hartford police departments.

Editor's note: This has been corrected for phrasing errors in two places.

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